Canada

During the Covid-19 pandemic, face masks have become the new norm with their widespread use in public as part of a multi-barrier approach for infection control, including physical distancing, hand hygiene, and altered social behaviour. Masks provide benefits to both the mask wearer and to those in their proximity when they are worn by all individuals in a common area. The gold standard in personal protective equipment (PPE) remains the N95 respirator, made of synthetic materials with electrostatic properties that filter and retain more than 95% of aerosols &lt;1 µm and larger in size. N95 respirators degrade during washing and disinfection, and as such are single use disposable PPE. Similarly, surgical-style masks made of polypropylene and non-woven materials are unsuited to frequent washing/decontamination with heat or detergents. Owing to their disposable nature, most commercially available PPE such as the above are unsustainable for supplying the public due to supply interruptions, high cost over time, and a lack of aesthetic attributes (colour, pattern) to encourage use.

As a result, textile manufacturers and a new cottage industry of homemade mask makers, including volunteers making donated masks for vulnerable populations, can provide fabric face masks to the public. Recently, the U.S. CDC indicated that commercial manufacturers of face masks will require testing although the conditions of such standards have yet to be outlined. Recently, Dr. Tam has made recommendations for mask materials to elevate the quality of masks being worn by the public, however these recommendations are not easily translatable to actual mask construction and such recommendations are based on very limited testing of fabric masks.

This presentation will discuss the development of a test apparatus for assessing mask efficacy by measuring the aerosols transmitted through the masks. We use a laser-based system, using relatively inexpensive diode lasers to illuminate the exhaled particles, a webcam for data acquisition, and Python-based particle tracking software. We make the approximation that the intensity of the scattered light from the droplets is proportional to the size of the droplet, but we will be able to quantify the droplet size by analyzing the data with Mie scattering theory.

Reference:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083?te=1&amp;nl=running&amp;emc=edit_ru_20200822

CAP Virtual Congress 2021

Laser-based mask characterization for prophylaxis of Covid-19

laser

mask

covid-19

**WELCOME TO THE 2021 CAP VIRTUAL CONGRESS UNDERLINE PLATFORM**

The CAP staff and our organizing and program committees are pleased to welcome you to our 2021 Congress filled with plenary talks, technical sessions/talks, student presentations and competition sessions, workshops, and several symposia offered by the CAP divisions and its partners.  

You will also have opportunities to network with other delegates through the Gathertown platform accessed by selecting the lounge or posters button on the left.

Registered delegates should use the schedule button to call up the details of the session/event they wish to attend.  Each sessions includes a link to access the online platform where the event is taking place, either within Underline or through other Congress-related Zoom meetings.  

Invited speaker talks are identified with an (I), and student competitors include a (G*) or (U*) to identify graduate or undergraduate presenters.

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General information about the Congress can be found on the CAP website Congress pages at https://www.cap.ca/congress/2021.

Looking for a specific talk?   A full searchable list is available on our Indico Congress site at https://indico.cern.ch/event/985448/contributions/

We look forward to sharing this exciting week with you!


During the Covid-19 pandemic, face masks have become the new norm with their widespread use in public as part of a multi-barrier approach for infection control, including physical distancing, hand hygiene, and altered social behaviour. Masks provide benefits to both the mask wearer and to those in their proximity when they are worn by all individuals in a common area. The gold standard in personal protective equipment (PPE) remains the N95 respirator, made of synthetic materials with electrostatic properties that filter and retain more than 95% of aerosols <1 µm and larger in size. N95 respirators degrade during washing and disinfection, and as such are single use disposable PPE. Similarly, surgical-style masks made of polypropylene and non-woven materials are unsuited to frequent washing/decontamination with heat or detergents. Owing to their disposable nature, most commercially available PPE such as the above are unsustainable for supplying the public due to supply interruptions, high cost over time, and a lack of aesthetic attributes (colour, pattern) to encourage use.

As a result, textile manufacturers and a new cottage industry of homemade mask makers, including volunteers making donated masks for vulnerable populations, can provide fabric face masks to the public. Recently, the U.S. CDC indicated that commercial manufacturers of face masks will require testing although the conditions of such standards have yet to be outlined. Recently, Dr. Tam has made recommendations for mask materials to elevate the quality of masks being worn by the public, however these recommendations are not easily translatable to actual mask construction and such recommendations are based on very limited testing of fabric masks.

This presentation will discuss the development of a test apparatus for assessing mask efficacy by measuring the aerosols transmitted through the masks. We use a laser-based system, using relatively inexpensive diode lasers to illuminate the exhaled particles, a webcam for data acquisition, and Python-based particle tracking software. We make the approximation that the intensity of the scattered light from the droplets is proportional to the size of the droplet, but we will be able to quantify the droplet size by analyzing the data with Mie scattering theory.

Reference:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083?te=1&nl=running&emc=edit_ru_20200822

technical paper

Phytoglycogen occurs naturally in the form of compact, 42 nm diameter glucose-based nanoparticles in the kernels of sweet corn. Its highly branched, dendritic structure leads to interesting and useful properties that make the particles ideal as unique additives in personal care, nutrition and biomedical formulations. The properties of phytoglycogen nanoparticles can be altered through chemical modifications such as acid hydrolysis, which not only reduces their diameter but also alters their internal structure, producing significant changes to the interactions between particles in solution. As the acid hydrolyzed particles are packed beyond their glass transition volume fraction, the dependence of the zero-shear viscosity on the effective volume fraction abruptly changes from behaviour well-described by the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann equation to more Arrhenius-like behaviour, with the transition marked by a pronounced kink in the data. This result is consistent with a reduction in stiffness for acid hydrolyzed phytoglycogen nanoparticles with a corresponding reduction in their fragility index.

Size and Stiffness Reduction of Phytoglycogen Nanoparticles Through Acid Hydrolysis

Time-domain terahertz (THz) spectroscopy has been widely exploited in studying semiconductors, superconductors, topological insulators, and metal-organic frameworks. A high-sensitivity THz system can resolve weak spectroscopic features and a broadband system allows experimentalists to rely on additional spectral information to investigate novel phenomena in materials. In a standard configuration relying on difference frequency mixing to generate and detect THz radiation, the spectroscopy signal can be improved by increasing the nonlinear interaction length inside a nonlinear crystal. However, the accessible spectral bandwidth is then limited by phase-matching conditions. Here we demonstrate a time-resolved THz system relying on noncollinear THz generation and detection schemes in thick nonlinear crystals to perform high-sensitivity and broadband spectroscopy. This concept relies on a phase grating etched on the front surface of two 2-mm thick gallium phosphide (GaP) crystals (THz generation and detection crystals) to diffract the incident near-infrared pulses. Our scheme exploits the long interaction length in these crystals to improve the signal strength and dynamic range in the system. In addition, the noncollinear geometry yields optimizable phase-matching conditions to access a broad spectral bandwidth. We compare our results with those obtained with a traditional broadband collinear system using a pair of thin GaP crystals without gratings. The noncollinear geometry shows a significant increase of the maximum signal amplitude, by a factor of 20, while also achieving a large spectral bandwidth reaching up to 7 THz. We also achieve a dynamic range above 80 dB between 1.1 and 4.3 THz. Our concept could be extended to other nonlinear crystals besides GaP to improve THz generation and detection in different spectral regions. In conclusion, this work paves the way towards high-sensitivity THz spectroscopy over a broad bandwidth in low power experiments and could enable high-field THz generation above 3 THz.

Broadband and high sensitivity THz system with grating-assisted noncollinear phase-matching

In an earlier study on the Wiedemann–Franz Law and the thermoelectric figure of merit (FoM), we studied the electronic effects in detail. We briefly investigated the role of the lattice thermal conductivity in enhancing the FoM and derived the characteristic equations in the form of an offset-logarithmic function (a special case of the generalized Lambert W function) [1]. This work follows up with analytical and numerical solutions to the offset-log function and provides better insight into the materials parameter space. We find the extrema of the lattice thermal conductivity and comment on its role in optimizing the figure of merit.

[1] Yadav, A., Deshmukh, P. C., Roberts, K., Jisrawi, N. M., & Valluri, S. R. (2019). “An analytic study of the Wiedemann–Franz law and the thermoelectric figure of merit”, Journal of Physics Communications, 3 (10), 105001.

An Analytical study of the role of lattice conductivity in the enhancement of the thermoelectric figure of merit

Optical parametric amplifiers deliver intense ultrashort pulses with broadly tuneable frequencies, useful for strong field physics, high harmonic generation, and attosecond experiments. Currently, this nonlinear amplification scheme relies on the second order nonlinearity, $\chi^{(2)}$,which is made possible only by crystals without centro-symmetry. More recently, investigations into a non-collinear setup show an increase in the phase matching bandwidth, leading to the creation even shorter pulses [1]. In this presentation, we discuss our research involving non-collinear parametric amplification of ultrashort pulses using wide bandgap materials with centrosymmetry, previously reported as Kerr instability amplification (KIA) [2]. 

We find that by using these crystals that exploit the next order nonlinearity, $\chi^{(3)}$,we can choose our amplifying medium from a more general class of crystals and still can generate gain factors of g = 50 /mm, or amplification factors of > $10^{12}$ [3]. Without the constraint of centrosymmetry, we have a greater selection by varying the bandgap, thermal properties, and linear and nonlinear indices of refraction. We developed pulse propagation models to optimize the critical parameters for amplification, and we find that the amplified pulse duration is much shorter than the pump and can be independent of the seed. We test several high bandgap dielectrics to optimize our scheme. We experimentally demonstrate the octave spanning amplification, showing that KIA is closely linked to degenerate four-wave mixing. We also spectrally and temporally characterize the amplified pulses to show the agreement with theory.

References
[1] H. Fattahi et al, Third-generation femtosecond technology, Optica 1 45-63 (2014)
[2] G. Vampa, TJ Hammond et al, Kerr instability amplification, Science 359 673-675 (2018)
[3] M. Nesrallah et al, Theory of Kerr instability amplification, Optica 5 271-278 (2018)

Multi-octave Parametric Amplification for Ultrashort Laser Pulses

How diffusivity (e.g., of proteins in the plane of biomembranes) is impacted by obstruction has been explored using Lattice Monte Carlo methods for random and periodic obstacle configurations. However real systems are neither periodic nor totally random. We present a study of transient and steady-state molecular diffusion in two-dimensional ”Fuzzy” systems of immobile obstacles, \textit{i.e.,} systems which bridge the gap between the ideal periodic and random limits. In particular, we examine whether there are ”diffusion phase transitions”, i.e., abrupt quantitative and/or qualitative changes at some critical degree of disorder. For instance, while the crossover length $r^*$ (describing the transition from anomalous to normal diffusion) decreases when the concentration of obstacles, $\phi$, increases in a periodic system, it is the opposite for random systems. Interestingly, $r^*(\phi)$ can become a very weak function of $\phi$ in some fuzzy systems. We investigate several ways of creating tunable disorder leading to different behaviour, and we introduce a parameter describing how the disorder in fuzzy systems impacts diffusion. Furthermore we introduce a new relation between the crossover length $r^*$, and the properties of the (anomalous) transient regime, including the excess diffusivity that it generates. Finally we propose new connections between the properties of the transient and steady-state regimes, most notably the possibility of estimating the steady state diffusion coefficient using early time (transient) data.

Diffusion in a membrane in the presence of immobile obstacles: the role of disorder

SnIP is an exciting new quasi-1D van der Waals semiconductor with a unique double-helix structure at the atomic scale that shows promise as a new material for flexible electronics. However, due to the high resistivity of as-grown SnIP its true potential is not clear. In this work, we study SnIP-nanowire thin films using time-resolved THz spectroscopy (TRTS), a powerful ultrafast optical tool that enables picosecond-resolution measurement of the complex photoconductivity spectrum. Modeling the dispersion of the conductivity allows us to extract the carrier scattering rate, however, the choice of model can yield different values. We discuss our results in terms of the two most common models in the field, the Drude-Smith model and the plasmon model, and show how fluence-dependent spectroscopic studies can be used to differentiate the two experimentally. Moreover, with knowledge of the effective mass, the scattering rate enables us to calculate the carrier mobility. We performed an ab-initio study of the electronic structure in SnIP and extracted the effective mass tensor for several bands near the Fermi level. Along with the carrier scattering rate, we find a carrier mobility as high as 280 cm^2 V^-1s^-1, which is remarkably high for such a soft and flexible material and suggests that it is ideally suited for flexible electronics. Moreover, we find a large anisotropy in the electronic structure, which is due to the low symmetry and unique bond arrangement in SnIP. In the effective mass approximation, the preferred transport direction is band dependent, with preferential electron and hole transport parallel and perpendicular to the double-helix axis, respectively. Furthermore, we show that over a wide range of energies the conduction band dispersion shows quasi-2D behavior and discuss possible experimental evidence of this in our TRTS data.

High carrier mobility and anisotropic electronic structure in double-helix SnIP nanowires

The Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source is a versatile and reliable source to charge-breed rare isotopes at the TRIUMF's Isotopes Separation and Acceleration (ISAC) facility. Significant research work has been done by different groups worldwide to improve the efficiency and performance of the ECRIS as a charge state booster. The most recent of these research works is the implementation of the two-frequency heating on the ECRIS. At the ISAC facility of TRIUMF, a 14.5 GHz PHOENIX booster which has been in operation since 2010 was recently upgraded to accommodate the two-frequency heating system using a single waveguide. The efficiency for charge breeding into a single charge state, which depends on the rare isotope that is being charge-bred, has been determined to be between 1 - 6 and will be improved by the activities started at TRIUMF. The CSB, and the corresponding beam transport lines are being investigated in terms of beam properties like beam emittance from the extraction system, and after the beam separation. A systematic investigation of the effect of the two-frequency heating technique on the intensity, emittance, and efficiency of the extracted beam is presently being conducted.

Improvement of the Efficiency of the TRIUMF Charge State Booster

Social distancing measures have been the main non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) against the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous large-scale analyses have studied how these measures have affected human movement, finding sizeable drops in average mobility. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to higher-order effects such as “superspreading events” which are known to be outsized drivers of pandemics. Networks with heterogeneous (high variance) distributions of contacts can dramatically accelerate spreading processes, even if the average number of contacts is low. This stresses the need to quantify higher-order effects, and the (in)ability of existing NPI to reduce them.

Here we assess this by applying tools of statistical physics to approximately 12 billion anonymized mobile phone traces from 2.33 million devices in the Chicago metropolitan area, from Jan.1 to Jun.30, 2020, covering the first wave of state- and city-level social distancing measures in the pandemic. To identify potential super-spreading events, we grid these data at a fine spatial and temporal resolution, revealing large, transient co-localizations of people which we term hotspot events. We then ask about the spatiotemporal distribution of these events and the mobility statistics of the people participating in them--both before and after the implementation of social distancing measures. 
Encouragingly, we find that distancing policies heralded a dramatic rarefaction of people, reflected in an increase in the entropy of their spatial distribution. As a result, we observe a concomitant drop in hotspot event frequency, with the largest reduction occurring in the urban core. This, however, belies a more worrisome trend: though we observe a large average reduction in the amount people travel (as measured by individual radius of gyration), this fails to be true for the subset of users participating in hotspot events. These users display higher-than-average baseline mobility, which persists (and even increases) during the post-lockdown period.

Our findings indicate that though social distancing policies may succeed in reducing average mobility, their effectiveness in reducing the key driver of spreading processes on networks (the second moment of the degree distribution) may be more limited. This in turn suggests the need for additional NPI specifically targeted at “super-spreading events”.

Quantifying Density Hotspots and Potential Superspreading Events During COVID-19

Liquid Argon (LAr) is used as a target material by many WIMP dark matter search experiments for its high light-yield and excellent background rejection capability. LAr produces scintillation light at 128nm, which conventionally requires a wavelength shifting (WLS) material to be detected by photomultiplier tubes. Tetraphenyl-butadiene (TPB) is the WLS material of choice for most LAr detectors, including DEAP-3600 at SNOLAB, and is used to shift the primary scintillation light. Our work aims to characterize candidate thin films containing pyrene developed at Carleton University. Their long fluorescence time constant can be used for efficient rejection of pathological detector backgrounds. Fluorescence yield and mechanical stability in cryogenic conditions are also investigated. We describe the Queen's University cryogenic test facility which boasts good optical efficiency and a base temperature of 4K. We present results from pyrene thin films with various concentrations and purity as well as TPB as a reference.

Characterization of wavelength shifters for background rejection in liquid argon dark matter experiments

We discuss interaction of gravitational waves with matter including plasma and its implications for cosmology.

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Laser-based mask characterization for prophylaxis of Covid-19

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Size and Stiffness Reduction of Phytoglycogen Nanoparticles Through Acid Hydrolysis

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